Recent reviews by Duke Fartknocker

Timespinner really is quite special. Even if every idea isn't fully-baked.

It's a search action/mapformer/metroidvania (delete as appropriate) in the Iga tradition, which is to say it resembles Symphony of the night, with a fun time gimmick to present 2(and a bit) maps to explore. Your weapons are a variety of magic orbs that produce effects from blunt force to lightning bolts to Star Platinum fists to guns. There are side quests, though not that many.

For non-completionists this'll run you 8 hours of solid exploration, which is plenty for me, and you get good enemy designs, music, and visuals as you go. That's all it had to do.

There's some additional stuff in levelling up your weapons and familiars, but in both cases you're likely to find a fave and stick with it (mine were the little dragon you get and the moon-based shattered orbs), which makes the levelling mechanics feel a bit basic outside of new game+.

I feel like I'm being a bit matter of fact, but this really is quite great. It's just that the stuff worth talking about is very mechanical. The story is fine, and the characters are likeable and inclusive. You get a couple of choices later on, even though they're basically all doable before you're done. It's good stuff. You just might not be inspired to shout from the roofs about it.

I will, however, be eager to follow these developers. Four stars.

Wilmot Works It Out was always going to appeal to me as a puzzle game with a nice aesthetic, but I never anticipated it having an absolute grip on me for almost sixteen hours, so pleasing was the simple loop of accepting packages and putting images together.

The main mode has you meeting your friendly postie every day for a quick chat and the delivery of your puzzle club package, containing enough pieces to finish one puzzle (these being a bunch of squares of art that you have to arrange into full images), occasionally with pieces left over for future puzzles. You use your floor space effectively to both arrange the puzzles and the pieces saved for later, and by the end of it you've formed quite the attachment to your postie, as well as Wilmot himself, adorable white square that he is.

The real meat is in the second mode though, in which every single puzzle has been mixed in to packages you can request at any time and attempt to arrange in your extra large living room. The strategy and approach is all up to you, free-form puzzle solving! Do you accept a mountain of pieces, solving one puzzle at a time, make a warehouse layout for perusal and common pieces until you see enough to start pursuing various puzzles, or do you try and build what you can from each one as you go, hoping you don't run out of space before you're done.

It's fantastic, a nice meaty mode with constant serotonin as you finally piece stuff together. I could just play that forever, honestly. Amazing stuff.

If there's any negative it's that I don't care much about decorating the various rooms with the completed puzzles, but someone will care deeply, and there's a bunch of cool achievements for following certain themes. So uh... it's not a negative.

Perfect game, then

I refuse to spoil anything about this game, as you simply must buy and play this for yourself. It's the price of a cheap lunch, and in exchange you get a clever little mystery game with an interesting gimmick, stunning aesthetic, and a great short story.

I will say that the experience of going for full achievements adds so much to the experience, and has me greatly anticipating whatever the developer does next, especially if it continues to be in this setting.

Now go buy it.

Many years ago, I reviewed a cool indie platformer about a dog with a grappling hook, evoking memories of beloved GBA classics while still managing to be its own thing. It was a true delight with basically just some ho-hum boss fights holding it back from true perfection. I was hopeful that a sequel one day would perfect the formula, and waited with anticipation for whatever came next.

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines came out in 2024, and I was ecstatic! A whole new campaign, with mountains of unlockable aesthetics, a bunch of new worlds with unique designs, new power-ups that substantially changed the experience of playing as Pablo, and a whole new dog to play as! With a darker attitude! AND A GUN! THAT'S WHAT WE WANT IN OUR MASCOT PLATFORMERS!

Luna is a fantastic addition, one with all the grappling fun of Pablo, but the extra challenge of aiming and shooting your gun to overcome certain obstacles and enemies. When powered-up with flamethrowers and electric shotguns she really comes alive as a versatile action-platformer character, with each weapon presenting other ways to move through the stages, making the time trials a must-play adventure in traversal (Pablo's own power-ups also achieve this, something I have to mention now because I will inevitably forget later on. Pablo is a good dog who does good things. I also like his new outfit.). Luna is also the source of my only really substantial complaint in this near-perfect sequel, and I don't know if it's on me or the intrinsic design of her shooting.

You see, aiming is handled by the right analog stick. The controls for jumping, air dashing, and firing your grapple are primarily on the right face buttons. There are alternatives, but something in my basic 2D platformer brain was intent on either forming a weird multi-purpose claw grip or just awkwardly leaping between stick and buttons during tense moments. It is probably a me problem. It's a better choice than doing both aiming and movement on the left stick, as you'd lose so much of the platforming versatility. But it was the one thing that felt awkward in an otherwise silky smooth game. I'm not docking a star for it, but I want to mention it as a point of absolute honesty.

I mentioned the time trials, which I ended up completing all of on this playthrough. The extra options for both characters made it feel like a natural decision, and the aesthetics of each world encouraged the revisitation, as I roared through noir towns, cyber cityscapes, and mysterious jungles. I don't think there's ever been a platformer before this where I felt so tantalisingly close to hitting every par time that I never once got frustrated by the experience. Crash Warped eat your heart out.

And of course there's the bosses, and in turn the plot. Everything feels more alive in Cosmic Canines, and the bosses have a charisma and physicality that carries across to their fights, which were all challenging without being mindless. It's the big improvement over the original I'm most pleased about, and a hurdle cleared that not only makes the game easy to recommend, but also to replay without any bother.

The story is supported by these fiery weirdos and a clan of ghostly bear-monks that develops cleanly over time, hitting some big reveals about both Luna and the inter-dimensional world they inhabit that had me properly engaged from start to finish. Luna in particular is a high point, a traumatised and distant loner who gets drawn in by the space cadet pleasantness of Pablo and his boat of pals over time in a way that feels really organic.

Finally, as my thoughts are getting increasingly disjointed, the item shop. The many different grapples and costumes for Pablo and Luna are a welcome use for collected fruit, and unlock at a decent pace both through world milestones and the accumulation of said fruit. It flows well. I especially appreciated the football grapple, which I immediately gave to Pablo so I could fall into a Go Go Beckham hole all over again. All that being said, I wish I'd checked the achievements before buying any health upgrades from the shop, as there is an achievement for completing the game without buying any, and it's the only thing keeping me from whatever Steam calls a platinum or whatever. A minor complaint, but again, these things have to be noted.

Overall, an amazing game, with the most minor of issues. If you've not bought it, do so! It is often on sale (not that it isn't worth full price, I just know how you lot work), and has a level builder due in the near future, which feels like the point I'll be leaping into a replay for that final 'chievo (ugh, don't let me call them that). Five stars, don't miss out!

WAIT ♥♥♥♥ I BARELY MENTIONED THE GRAPPLING IT'S AS GOOD AS EVER AND THE SENSE OF MOMENTUM IS UNPARALLELED IN ITS GENRE OH GOD HOW DID I NOT MENTION THAT, IT'S PRETTY IMPORTANT!

Melody's Escape is basically my ideal sort of rhythm game. It's extraordinarily good at identifying beats in songs uploaded to it, it's rarely unfair at as high as intense difficulty, and its achievements encourage you to try to achieve perfection not by playing the same songs over and over, but rather by trying to have blind runs on as few as a hundred tracks to carve you into the twitchy music-loving behemoth that this game desires.

Also it's real pretty and has some great character designs available in the steam workshop.

Having played the game jam version of what would become Silence, I can say with some confidence I was looking forward to The Lion's Song. What I didn't expect was how well-thought out the expansion of that storyline would be, and how additional moments of gameplay didn't detract at all from an incredibly moving story. Could not be more excited for future episodes.

I was all but ready to give Ducktales: Remastered a positive review, despite what had been the occasional shonky control error, the obsolete inclusion of a lives system, and the cutscenes beginning to wear thin, because... Well, it's Ducktales, isn't it, in every way that matters. The spirit is there, and it evokes it brilliantly, taking what the NES game had presented to us before and updating it visually into something incredibly pleasing on a key aesthetic level.

And then the final level happened. The occasional control issue only gets worse when the game demands more from you, and so what should have been a triumphant finale to a decent enough game became frustratingly hard, through no fault of my own (not that I'd say I'm great at games, it's just that the issues were definitely on the game's part in this instance. That, followed by an awkward final boss and an extra platforming section where that lack of responsiveness stops you getting through a fiddly, precision-demanding bit of timed jumping.

Theres ways it could have been better, something like removing the lives system, or even just having a checkpointed continue option upon game over, but to demand that a player go through every problematic moment over and over just to get to whatever stumbling block they last came to. There's an argument to be made that changes such as these weren't made to preserve the original game's intent, but when you call your game a remastering you may as well go all out, yeah?

VVVVVV is, simply put, one of the best games available on Steam. It's deceivingly simple, in visuals and concept, but in being simple Cavanagh is able to craft one of the most fiendishly difficult, challenging and rewarding experiences possible. There's no great way to explain it other than to encourage everyone to play and experience it for themselves.

Reviewing Faerie Solitaire feels a little difficult, because it's kind of lacking in substance. But it's compelling, charming, and strangely relaxing to play. The ideal sort of game to play if you're a little burnt out and just want to mentally reset inbetween the latest big budget release and whatnot.

Dear Esther is worthy of note, as an intriguing experiment in using games as a narrative or artistic tool, but falls short for the pretty simple reason that it's not very good. Sluggish, visually unremarkable (which we can put down to age, sure, but oh look 2D plants), surprisingly unsubtle in its story and incredibly dry.

That's not to just be entirely unfair to it, however. It's inspired countless other, more interesting art games, and the lighting in the cave segment is still a pleasant touch. It just needed to be something more, and wasn't. Worth a try if you want to experience it, but if you're even slightly ambivalent you may as well move on to something else.